~ Sneak Peek ~ Quilting the Hunkering Down Quilt ~

Hello Quilting Buddies!  Just thought I would pop in for a sneak peek of my Hunkering Down quilt as its being quilted.  Custom quilting on my set up is tricky business.  I own a very low end midarm machine called a Bailey Home Quilter 15.  The 15 means she has a 15 inch throat, that's not much quilting space in the frame quilting world.  So quilting large blocks or spaces can be tricky but doable with a lot of rolling back and forth.  She is equipped with a stitch regulator but it's first generation or as I call it an old school regulator which makes it a little more difficult to maintain uniform length stitches.  Again, it's doable once you get the hang of how it works.  The quilting on this quilt is a mix of free motion and ruler work.  The feathers, circles and ovals are free motion.  The arcs, straight lines and crosshatching is ruler work.  Yes, she is quilted to death.  With so much open space for quilting I just couldn't help myself.  Over the last couple of years I've greatly reduced the amount of quilting on my quilts but every once in a while a gal just needs to take a quilt over the top and quilt it to death.

Deciding the quilting design can sometimes be the death of a quilt, at least for my quilts.  I've about 30 quilt tops in need of quilting because when they were finished I couldn't decide on the quilting.  With my quilt top storage full I must quilt quilt tops as they are finished or make room for more quilt top storage.  The more quilt tops in storage the less room for new fabric and I don't want that to happen!....HAHA!  So I spent many hours looking for quilting ideas and drawing out my ideas.  I'd like to give credit to the owner of the image below but there was no information provided.  Anyway...As soon as I saw it I knew it was perfect for my quilt.  Feathers combined with crosshatching, it just doesn't get much better than that!

Finding the perfect border design was much easier than deciding on the block quilting.  

Hours were spent doodling on my quilt top with the plexi-glass and dry erase marker.  Until I finally said this is good enough, just QUILT IT.

Oh but I wasn't finished designing.  There's still the matter of the blank alternating block.  The first idea was to do a very traditional feathered wreath with cross hatching to match the border.  But since the throat on the quilter is 15 inches and the 12 inch on point blocks are 17 inches long it would require some super tricky quilting maneuvers.  Nope, I need a plan that is easy to break down into 2 quilting areas.   After a few hours I finally came up with a quilting plan that will compliment the border and can easily be broken into 2 or more quilting areas.

Pulling together all the quilting can be quite tricky.  Sometimes I get it right and sometimes I don't.   To late to make changes now!  See you in a few days with the finish!

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